SATHYANATHAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner herein has been arrayed as the sole accused in the instant Crime No.873/2019 of Kulathuppuzha Police Station, Kollam, which has been registered for offences punishable under Sec.354 of the IPC and Secs.7, 8, 11 and 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act, 2012, on the basis of the FI Statement given by the minor victim girl aged 14 years on 09.07.2019 at about 4.30 p.m in respect of the alleged incidents happened on 07.07.2019 at 3.30 p.m.

(2.) It appears that the minor victim girl is studying in a school and the said school authorities had provided school bus facilities and that her parents are working in a company called RPL Company and that the said RPL Company has provided buses that are being used by the school for transporting the school children and that the petitioner/accused aged 48 years is a cleaner in the said bus and that the minor victim girl used to travel to the school in the said bus, in which the petitioner/accused is a cleaner and that on 07.07.2019 at about 3.30 p.m., when she had come to take bath in the pond near her RPL colony, the petitioner had caught hold of her right breast and exposed his nudity by lifting his clothes and thereby he is alleged to have committed the abovesaid offences.

(3.) The petitioner has been arrested on 09.07.2019 and has been under judicial custody since then. Sri.P.Anoop (Mulavana), learned counsel appearing for the petitioner would point out that the abovesaid allegations are absolutely false and fabricated and that even according to the minor victim girl, her parents are working in the same company (RPL Company), whose buses are being used by the school authorities and that the petitioner/accused is also working as a cleaner in the said bus of the Company, which is being used by the school authority and that she is frequently travelling in that bus in which the petitioner is working as a cleaner and that both parties are immediate neighbours and that the minor victim girl does not even have a whisper of an allegation that at any prior point of time, the petitioner has misbehaved with her in any manner either in the school bus or in the school campus or in their common residential area or elsewhere. That the fact of the matter is that the petitioner used to note that the girl used to behave by showing unnecessary closeness and intimacy to the boy students and seeing her frequent behaviour, he had advised her to stop the behaviour or otherwise as a good friend of her parents, he would be forced to inform her parents about her behaviour to correct her. That the girl got highly enraged of that and it is only on account of the petitioner's effort to correct her deviant behaviour that she has now raised this extremely false allegation that while she was taking bath in the pond, he had gone there and touched her breast and had exposed his nudity, etc. in order to intimidate the petitioner not to inform her parents about her behaviour, etc.